


vestige

by oryx



Category: Rockman X | Mega Man X
Genre: Angst, Gen, Introspection, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-20
Updated: 2014-02-20
Packaged: 2018-01-13 04:27:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 540
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1212640
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/oryx/pseuds/oryx
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>X arrives at an impasse.</p>
            </blockquote>





	vestige

**Author's Note:**

> please don't mind me!! i just had a lot of feelings about the end of x5....

Once, a long time ago, he watched part of an old human-made movie. In it, a man lost his wife in a tragic accident and sank into a deep, depressive state. Later in the film he shared a drink with a friend, hanging his head as he wept, and whispered, “I’m starting to forget what her voice sounded like.”

X never gave this line much thought. What do outdated human sentiments mean to him, anyhow? But nowadays, strangely enough, he finds himself thinking of it often. Nowadays he finds himself wondering: Isn’t forgetfulness a blessing in disguise? Aren’t humans lucky, the way their memories fade in clarity with each passing day?

Unless one’s system is damaged, the recollection of a Reploid is absolute. A perfect replay of a thirty-year-old memory can be summoned up in an instant, can be fastforwarded and paused like a video, can be sifted through and examined in minute, excruciating detail. Unlike a human, whose brain can only hold so much before bits and pieces must be deleted, a Reploid’s capacity for data storage is almost infinite in scope.

And so, no matter how much he might wish it, X will never be able to forget.

Until the end of his days he will continue to remember the feel of Zero’s exposed wiring beneath his hands. The quiet electric crackle of his circuits as they began to break. The acrid smell of scorched metal from the hole in his chest.

The way his voice stuttered like a broken recording when he told X to “live.”

X wishes he knew how. “Living” is different than “existing,” after all. “Living” is more than just endless missions, endless confrontation, endless following of orders. This much, X knows. But what else is there, now that their world has gone to hell? (What else is there, now that he is alone?) 

He wonders if he and Zero could have lived together. He wonders if they could have been – 

“Captain?”

He glances up to find the new recruits looking at him strangely. They’re in the control room of the Hunter Base, surrounded by the thrum of dozens of anxious voices. The ‘emergency’ light is flashing overhead. He can’t remember how he got here, and he quickly plays back his memory file of the past hour, from the alert that first roused him to Signas’s harried mission briefing. A massive Mechaniloid – origin unknown – cutting a swath of destruction across the surface, threatening to destroy one of the last remaining independent outposts. ETA twenty minutes and counting.

“Captain?” one of the recruits prompts. They are beginning to look rather unnerved by X’s silence. “Your command?”

He stares at them for a time, taking in their faces one by one and remembering their names.

“…Right,” he says finally, and blinks away his momentary confusion. “Right. Move out, troops. I’ll rendezvous with you at the transport point in exactly five minutes.”

The new recruits snap to attention and salute. Their eyes are bright. They are so eager to serve under his command. So willing to throw their lives away for a world that’s half-dead already.

X’s fingers tighten around the hilt of the Z-Sabre.

(For now, he supposes, “existing” is all he can hope to do.)


End file.
